China also has yet to detail tariff-rate quotas in industries including footwear, industrial machinery and telecommunications equipment.
Tariff-rate quotas detail duty-free limits on imported goods, above which a duty must be paid. While China's WTO accord gives it the right to shield some industries through this mechanism, the quotas will rise during the next 15 years.
Murck said details of the quotas are overdue, keeping companies from Advanced Cellular Technology Inc to Rockwell International Corp guessing about how much business they will be able to do.
"It's difficult for us to judge whether some of these are intentionally being put in place to restrict the amount of exports that can come into China, or whether it's just establishing a set of rules and fine-tuning them," said Cunningham of Archer Daniels.
China pledged to abide by its WTO commitments, and did so again after the US released its critical statement on soybeans.
"China will honor its commitments," said Ma Dezhi, a spokesman for China's Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation in Beijing.
Zoellick said in a speech last week to the US-China Business Council that China will do itself no favors if it tries to manipulate WTO rules.
"If China tries to subvert the free-trade principles of the WTO by twisting them into elements of a bureaucratic industrial policy, it will both fail to derive the advantages of those principles and undercut global WTO objectives," Zoellick said.
"We will make this point as often as necessary -- and it will have to be made often."
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